Good evening everyone! So, I've decided to be ultra-cool and build some pedals, of course without any knowledge on electronics. "Oh, it'll be easy" I thought.
Anyway, I've built two boards, both not working properly. I shall ignore the first one and concentrate my question on the second one, the Mangler. I am building a silicon NPN-based Mangler. I have followed the schematic/layout religiously, and have swapped the diode and electrolytic capacitors round to suit the NPN transistors.
The problem lies in the biasing. According to the schematics, I should be biasing the transistors to -4.5v (or something like that). However, I'm getting no lower than ~7.41, depending on what transistors I have in (I have 5 BC108s and 5 BC109s, and have tried various combos). Is this voltage reading due to the high hFE of the silicon transistors? And if so, how do I go about lowering said reading?
I haven't tested to see if it sounds ok yet, as I wanted to take this board slowly after totally ruining the other one (which, however, may end up working if I can nail this transistor problem!).
Thank you so much for your help in advance.
Anyway, I've built two boards, both not working properly. I shall ignore the first one and concentrate my question on the second one, the Mangler. I am building a silicon NPN-based Mangler. I have followed the schematic/layout religiously, and have swapped the diode and electrolytic capacitors round to suit the NPN transistors.
The problem lies in the biasing. According to the schematics, I should be biasing the transistors to -4.5v (or something like that). However, I'm getting no lower than ~7.41, depending on what transistors I have in (I have 5 BC108s and 5 BC109s, and have tried various combos). Is this voltage reading due to the high hFE of the silicon transistors? And if so, how do I go about lowering said reading?
I haven't tested to see if it sounds ok yet, as I wanted to take this board slowly after totally ruining the other one (which, however, may end up working if I can nail this transistor problem!).
Thank you so much for your help in advance.